1. Field
The present invention relates to an incubator comprising a temperature-controlled room which can maintain the environment condition suitable for incubating samples, and peripheral technology thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Incubators comprising a temperature-controlled room are generally used to incubate samples such as various microorganisms or cells. In such a temperature-controlled room, it is common to simultaneously incubate samples in a plurality of incubation containers.
On the other hand, it has been proposed to provide the incubator with a function of automatically observing the sample within the incubation container. For example, Patent Document 1 (Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2006-11415) discloses an arrangement of an incubation microscope which automatically executes time lapse observing of samples.
When automating the observation of samples in the incubator, it becomes very important to control the observing schedule. Particularly, overlap of observing schedules for a plurality of incubation containers may raise the possibility that samples can not be recorded with the time zone and number of times of observations desired by the user, whereby availability of the device substantially decreases. The above-mentioned Patent Document 1 has not sufficiently given consideration to prevent overlap of observing schedules, which leaves room for improvement at this point.